Bread and Bracelets

For Better to Give Than to Receive during B week, Arin made braided bread for Uncle Brian.  She quickly learned the braiding pattern (over two, under one).  I did have to help tighten up the braid, but otherwise she did that part.  Arin thought the greatest part of making this bread was when she painted the bread with a beaten egg.  Ella also helped brush the egg on the bread.  We also made a second loaf of this bread for our family and it was so good.  The recipe can be found here.

She also beaded a black and blue bracelet for Brianna.  This bracelet was more difficult than the amethyst anklet that she made last week.

Almonds and Anklets

One lesson we've always tried to teach our children is that it is better to give than to receive.  When Arin was 18 months old, we started having her help bake something to give to someone.  We would look at a picture of the person as we baked for them.  Then, Arin would hand deliver the food item to the person.  I've fallen behind on teaching this lesson to Ella and also having her help me in the kitchen.  So when we decided to do a Letter of the Week, it only made sense to incorporate in the lesson of it is better to give than to receive into our weekly curriculum.  We choose people whose name begin with the letter that we are working on and we make/buy them something that also begins with that letter.  I wish, I could say this was an original idea, but it came from an idea that I saw here.

For the letter A, Ella made Anytime Almonds for Aunt Angie.  She had a lot of fun with this project (she even let Arin help a little!) and Aunt Angie said the almonds were very delicious!

Arin made an Amethyst-colored anklet for Amber.  She strung the beads all by herself and I think she did an awesome job of it.  Arin had such a great time with this project and Amber was very pleased with her gift!

Necklace Beading

Today, Arin found a container of beads and decided she'd like to make herself a necklace.  We don't have any plastic needles, so I cut the tip off a regular (large-eye) needle.  I threaded the needle with embroidery floss and then let Arin loose to design and make her new necklace.

She loved this activity!

Unplug Your Kids: Cylinder

This week's Unplugged theme is cylinder. The only project that I came up with that we didn't do this week was to make a drum out of a cylinder shaped oatmeal container. We may still do that in the future, but not as part of this project.

The first project I had Arin do was to paint a cylinder shaped toilet paper roll. She loves to paint, so this was great for her. She's so particular about everything. It was really entertaining to watch her.

While we were waiting for the toilet paper roll to dry, we moved on to the next project. I had Arin "sew" a pasta necklace. We were in luck because we already had cylinder shaped pasta (rigatoni). I was planning on dying the pasta first, but we slept in this morning, so we just went with undyed, unpainted pasta. She still had a blast with this. She was disappointed that she wasn't able to eat the pasta like she could eat the Fruit Loops when we made the cereal necklace, but she wore the necklace until it was naptime.

Arin loves to color and we always have her crayons out so that she can color any time that she wants to, which is quite often. However, I am tired of her not picking up her crayons when she is finished with them. I am tired of finding them all over the place and stepping on them. Last week, I had bought some frozen juice concentrate. Some of the juices come in a plastic cylinder shaped container now, so I had the idea of making a crayon holder out of the container. This is something that I remember doing in kindergarten or first grade. I love that the containers are plastic now. Last week Arin had made three very nice paintings. I love all of her artwork, but it just isn't practical for me to keep everything. Instead of just tossing the paintings into the trash, I decided it would be nice to use them on this project. I cut one of the paintings into a strip that would fit the juice container. Then I cut circles out of the other two paintings. Then, Arin used her glue stick and put glue on the backs of the circles and stuck the circles where she wanted them on the long strip of paper.

When she was done gluing on the circles, I put glue on the back of the strip and started rolling the paper around the juice container. I let Arin finish this once it was started. After it had dried for a little bit, I covered the paper with clear contact paper, to help deter Arin from pulling the circles back off of the paper. So far, Arin has been carrying this cylinder shaped crayon container with her from room to room since it has been finished.

Once the toilet paper cylinder dried, we used it to play hide-and-seek. I would hide the cylinder and Arin would find it. I remember playing this game with my mom when I was about 5. She would hide a button or a penny and tell me if I was hot or cold when I was trying to find it. This was the first time that I had played the game with Arin. She would leave the room while I would hide the cylinder and then she would come back in, all excited, and find it. She loved this game!